


Ill Met on Contraxia

by Sholio



Category: Black Panther (2018), Captain Marvel (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Space, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:10:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26300146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Wakanda's space program means that the War Dogs' work isn't limited to Earth. Nakia's quest to find a vibranium thief takes her far from home, into uncharted territory.
Relationships: Minn-Erva/Nakia (Black Panther)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 34
Collections: Alternate Universe Exchange 2020





	Ill Met on Contraxia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snickfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/gifts).



It was a cold planet. Nakia had not come prepared for that. Her Wakandan spacesuit and armor would have protected her from this planet's biting wind and scouring, icy snow, as easily as from the depths of cold in space — but the glimmer of vibranium in the suit's design, as it deployed outward from the wide coiled-metal necklace, might as well have waved a red flag to any enemy or thief who guessed what it was ... and offered far too much risk of tipping off her quarry.

So she huddled into her inadequate cloak, as the wind drove flakes of snow, hard as grains of sand, into every crevice, down the tops of her boots and up her skirt. Her fingertips were already going numb as she hastened from one seedy bar to another on what appeared to be the main commercial drag of this miserable city. Only a Jabari could enjoy it here, she thought. Even the people who lived here didn't seem to like it much; she encountered few smiles and many scowls among the disreputable-looking patrons.

This bar was much like the others: neon holographic signs out front, some unpleasant-looking customers scattered at the tables inside. Nakia forced herself not to look at anyone too long, keeping her face expressionless, though she would have loved a chance to take in the extraordinary variety of people around her. People with tentacles and people with six arms; people with horns; people with eyes that glowed red in the shadows. In some cases she genuinely couldn't tell if they were people, pets, or appliances, although that glowing sphere with the slowly rotating rings around it, hovering above a table, was definitely a person because it had a drink in front of it.

Nakia slipped her hand under her cloak, fingering her kimoyo beads and the edge of the ring blades clinking against her leg.

The bartender, at least, looked human enough that Nakia was pretty sure the kimoyo beads' translation function would work: a surly, muscular woman whose blue skin was laced with scars. "What'dya want," she growled, looking up from stacking used glasses in what appeared to be some kind of cleaning device.

"Information," Nakia said. She slid some plastic tabs of the local currency across the bar. She had acquired them at what she assumed was the local equivalent of a pawnshop, trading two chunks of what was actually tailings from the vibranium mines back home, next to worthless, but apparently worth quite a bit here for their trace vibranium content — as she had learned all too well when the pawnbroker and a buddy cornered her in an alley out back of the shop. She'd taken some more currency off their groaning bodies, after.

She still hadn't figured out denominations; she just had to shove them at people and learn what she'd offered by their reaction. She'd probably offered too much, based on the slight widening of the other woman's eyes before she swiped them off the counter with a palm.

There was a sureness to the woman's movements that Nakia recognized as the legacy of some sort of military or combat training. The scars on the backs of her hands spoke of a violent past. There was also a slight but noticeable quivering of her hands that Nakia guessed was due to drink or some sort of drug. This woman had been dangerous once; now she was scraping by tending bar at a seedy dive on a nowhere planet, but people like that never stopped being dangerous, not entirely.

"There is a man who stole something from my people," Nakia said. "I'm trying to find him. His name is Ulysses Klaue, although I don't know if he'll be using it. He often goes by Claw or something similar."

"Don't know him," the woman said.

"I can show you a picture." She slipped her fingertips under the cloak and brushed the kimoyo beads, not wanting to show off her tech. Holograms were nothing unfamiliar to these people, but Wakandan technology would be.

Klaue materialized above the counter. The blue woman stared at him for a moment without speaking, then said, "What planet are you from?"

"A little nothing of a world," Nakia said. "You haven't heard of it, I'm sure."

"You have your own ship?"

Nakia's danger sense was tingling hard by now, an electric shiver lighting up her spine. "I don't think that's any of your business."

A silence, then: "Like I said. Haven't heard of him, haven't seen him."

"Thank you anyway." Nakia thumbed the bead and let her hand drop. "If you wouldn't mind keeping an eye out? We will pay for any information leading to his capture."

The woman jerked her head in a terse nod, never taking her eyes off Nakia. The stare was unnerving and reminded Nakia a little too much of the way the pawnshop owner had looked at her after scanning the rocks ... which had contained far less vibranium than just one kimoyo bead.

"Thank you," Nakia said politely. She had to force herself to walk to the door, back straight, without looking over her shoulder.

Outside, the bitter chill of the planet sank icy needles into her face and stung the bare parts of her legs. She flipped up her hood and started to walk away normally, then looked around and ducked quickly into a doorway outside the bar.

No one followed her out, and as the long moments crept by and her knees went numb, she began to wonder if she was simply being paranoid. Still, the crawling sense of danger wouldn't leave her.

Perhaps it was time to give up on this planet, she thought, stamping sensation back into her feet. People had told her that Contraxia was the place to look for fugitives and criminals of all types, but that didn't mean Klaue had been within a dozen parsecs of the place.

 _But I will not go back empty-handed,_ she thought fiercely, clenching her hands into fists beneath her cloak as she began the slow slog back to where she'd parked her ship. It didn't matter that Wakanda had been searching for Klaue for years. This was her first trip off Earth, and her first truly important mission as a War Dog. T'Cha— that is, the King had placed his faith in her. She might not succeed, but she was determined to find _something_ out here, something that would justify the trust they had in her.

She found herself fingering the kimoyo beads again. They were an experimental version, an upgrade over the older style that were becoming ubiquitous across Wakanda. The small fingers of the King's young sister had fastened them around Nakia's wrist personally. "Only the best for my brother's War Dog," Shuri had said in her high young voice, patting the beads after putting them into place as if they were a pet that she was instructing to behave.

_No, I shall not return without— what was that?_

It was pure reflex that deployed the armor, just in time for a bolt from some kind of energy weapon to scatter off it, shredding and charring Nakia's cloak.

Nakia hit the snow, rolled, and came to her feet. The relief of warmth after the unrelenting cold flooded through her; the suit covered her entire body in close-fitting matte black laced with thin blue threads of vibranium, and a transparent shield covered her face. It was the first time she'd been comfortable since leaving her ship.

There was a curse from somewhere close by. This part of the city was a sprawling mess of mismatched buildings, many of which were nothing more than old shipping containers or parts of ships, and the handful of other pedestrians had instantly made themselves scarce at the first sign of shooting. Nakia touched the kimoyo beads, scanning for nearby energy signatures.

Then her assailant made it easy for her. Another shot splintered off the armor; it flashed all-over blue for a moment before fading. An instant later, the bartender burst out of the nearest alley, swinging a crackling energy blade.

 _That_ might actually be able to damage her armor. With a ring blade in either hand, Nakia spun to block it. Her heart pounded; she was good at hand-to-hand, but had never been able to beat Okoye in their training sessions, and she could tell that this woman had a solid grounding in combat. Nakia was a generalist, her skills drawn from the incredibly wide range that she might need in her undercover work. When it came right down to it, she would be lucky to be able to hold her own against someone who fought for a living. And the energy weapon had a considerably longer reach than anything she had on her. 

However skilled the movements, though, the bartender was clearly out of practice and at least somewhat out of shape. Nakia drove her back with the ring blades.

"Why are you doing this?" Nakia demanded. She had expected to be robbed, but this was more of an attempted assassination. "Are you working with Klaue?"

"I don't care about your Klaue," the woman panted. Her dark hair hung in her face, lank and damp with half-melted snow; her teeth were bared. "You're Terran, aren't you?"

Nakia didn't answer, but she was driven back another few steps under a renewed assault. Under less life-and-death circumstances she might really have enjoyed this; she'd always liked an all-out sparring session, and this stranger knew moves that Okoye had never taught her. 

"Your people cost me everything," the woman snarled. "And now you come in here throwing around your money, flaunting it, when I'm stuck on this frozen hell-hole planet. I'm taking your ship, and your money, and —"

"Enough," Nakia muttered. The woman's attacks were getting increasingly wild, and Nakia didn't want to find out if that energy blade could disrupt the vibranium suit. She charged forward, ducking inside the other woman's reach, and punched with both fists.

She was expecting the resistance of armor, but instead the ring blades bit deep into unprotected flesh. Blue blood splattered the snow, and the sword fell from suddenly nerveless fingers.

"Damn it," Nakia murmured, standing over the woman's body with bright blood dripping from her blades. She looked around anxiously. At least in a place like this, no one was in a hurry to interfere. She crouched and felt for a pulse. The woman stirred weakly. 

"Finish it," she whispered through lips wet with blood.

"I don't think so," Nakia muttered. She pressed a kimoyo bead to the woman's blood-sodden abdomen, temporarily binding it to stabilize the wound. "I need to find out how you know about Earth."

***

It had seemed like a good idea at the time, parking her cloaked ship some ways away from the city to avoid the risk of anyone trying to steal it. Nakia had definitively changed her mind after hauling the stranger's deadweight several miles through the snow and an increasingly violent blizzard. By the time she reached the ship, she was both grateful for her suit, and starting to wonder if the entire thing might end up being a loss after all; it wouldn't have surprised her if her badly injured assailant had died of exposure or blood loss on the trip.

Nakia unloaded the blue woman's deadweight in the cramped interior of the _Space Talon_ , and found a thready pulse when she felt for it.

"You're certainly hard to kill," she murmured, and went to fetch the medical equipment. She wasn't set up to deal with anything too complicated, but it looked like a clean wound, and all she really needed to do was stitch it shut and start the healing process.

Nakia had nowhere to put her except her own bed, so she carried her there and laid her atop the hand-embroidered blankets that her tribe had made for her, to take a little piece of home to space with her.

Unconscious, the blue woman looked younger, though her face was still tracked with hardness and exhaustion; it was clear that her life had not been easy. Her lips were darker than her skin, tinged with plum-purple as if she'd been eating the berries that grew semi-wild along the River Tribe's valley.

Stirred by an impulse she couldn't quite name, Nakia brushed her hand down the stranger's cheek, fingers running lightly over the blue skin, lingering at the edge of the plum-tinged lips. Then she pulled her hand quickly away. She secured the woman's hands together, and secured _that_ to the frame around the sleeping berth. Then she went to see to her ship's defenses, just in case the blue woman had friends.

But no one came; and it was night, the blizzard still raging outside the ship, when the woman woke abruptly with a curse and a clatter as she pulled on her bonds.

"Don't struggle," Nakia said. She was sitting on the floor beside the bed with a bowl of some sort of crunchy snack food she had obtained at the last space station (she didn't know what it was and had decided not to wonder; the kimoyo beads said it was compatible with Earth life and that was all she really needed to know), updating her coded log for her next report back to Wakanda.

The woman ignored her, snarling and jerking at her bonds, with little gasps of pain.

"I'm serious. If you tear your wound open again, I'll have to put you out. And you'll bleed on my bed. My grandmother personally embroidered the lizards on that blanket under you."

 _"Your_ bed," the woman said between her teeth. "Where am I?"

"On my ship, of course." Nakia held up a handful of the crunchy snack things. "Would you like something to eat?"

The woman's reply was incompletely translated — the beads had trouble with profanity; this was probably at least partly due to being programmed by a 12-year-old — but the meaning came through.

"You're right," Nakia said, unperturbed. "Water is better for you right now."

She brought a small cup. The woman glared at her balefully but eventually raised her head and allowed Nakia to place the rim of the cup to her plum-colored lips.

"There, that wasn't so bad, was it?"

"What are you going to do with me?" the woman spat. "Are you planning to hand me over to the Kree? Or the Xandarians?"

"I don't know who either of those are," Nakia said. She sat on the edge of the bed, her hip against the woman's side. "Why do they want you?"

The woman stared at her for a moment. Then she said, "You've never heard of the Kree. Or Xandar." 

"No."

More staring; then the woman let her head flop back down. "You really _are_ from Earth, I suppose. Where did you get this ship?"

"My people made it."

"Earth doesn't have technology like this!"

"Maybe you've been dealing with the wrong people from Earth," Nakia said. "When were you on Earth?"

The silence was so long this time that she wasn't expecting an answer, but finally, slowly, the woman said, "I was part of a strike force sent to recover a criminal on your forsaken planet. She wiped us out instead. I survived, but my people think me dead, and I could look forward to nothing but punishment, public disgrace, and exile for my failure if I return home — the same reception my former commander received, from what I've heard. I have no home now, and no people."

"I'm sorry," Nakia said sincerely. "That sounds very lonely."

The woman barked out a harsh laugh, and jerked at her bonds again. "I don't need your false sympathy."

"I know what it is to be a long way from home."

The woman rolled to face the wall.

"What's your name?" Nakia asked quietly.

A long silence, so long she was no longer expecting a response by the time the quiet, hoarse voice said, "Minn-Erva."

***

Minn-Erva slept again, and Nakia caught a nap on the floor, waking when her kimoyo beads alerted her that the prisoner was stirring. The storm still raged outside.

"I'm going to unbind you so you can use the facilities," Nakia said, sitting beside her. "First I need to check you for weapons."

A slight smile quirked the edge of the berry-stained lips. There was a scar there, right on the corner of her mouth; Nakia hadn't noticed it before. "Go right ahead. Have fun."

Nakia patted her down, relieved her of a few of those little money-cards and a knife, and peeled back the stiff rags of the shirt around her waist to check the healing slash across her abdomen. It was bruised darker blue around the wound, but seemed to be healing cleanly.

"I need to let you know, before I release you, that my ship is keyed only to me," Nakia said. She tapped her necklace and the suit flowed over her; through the face shield, she went on, "If you try to attack me or send a message, I will evacuate the air and wait for you to pass out, then bind you again."

"A message." There was another harsh laugh. "Who would I send a message to?"

"Just asking." Nakia touched the kimoyo bead holding Minn-Erva's cuffs together. It rolled back to her wrist and the cuffs fell away.

Minn-Erva sat up, rubbing her wrists and moving carefully around the healing abdominal wound. "That's some tech you have there. I haven't seen its like before. Your people did that?"

"That and more." Nakia rose, letting Minn-Erva get a look at the way the suit flowed to accommodate her movements. She only meant to show off its armor capabilities, but Minn-Erva's gaze, hot and intense, raked down her body, across her breasts and stomach — the suit was not immodest, but it also had no draperies, no folds to hide what was beneath. 

Nakia was the one who looked away first, her cheeks heating. She was at once aroused and angry. She couldn't afford to lose the upper hand, not with someone like this.

"The head is this way. I can help you to—"

"I don't need help." Minn-Erva jerked away from Nakia's offered arm and got up stiffly. Nakia saw her gaze flick around the room, lingering briefly on the ring blades hanging by the door, before dropping away. She moved stiffly but competently, supporting herself on the wall.

Once the door to the head closed, Nakia went to the kitchenette and prepared two light meals. By the time Minn-Erva came out, Nakia had folded down the table and placed two trays on it. She laid a folded sitting rug on the floor on either side, one for each of them.

Her ship was not designed for two. There was barely room to move around the table. Minn-Erva stared at it, and at Nakia sitting on the floor with the table across her lap. Then, carefully, she lowered herself on the other side. Her hair had been slicked back with water, and her face looked harder like that, without the softening effect of the framing dark hair curling over her cheeks.

"My kimoyo beads tell me that you should be able to eat the same food I can eat," Nakia said, tapping them. She touched her helmet and it melted away, leaving her head bare, but the rest of her still protected by the suit. "I don't know if you'll like it, but I haven't much variety here."

Minn-Erva merely stared suspiciously at the tray in front of her. It was from the ship's stores, the premade meals that Nakia had brought with her — she had chosen a simple meal of rice and plantain, figuring that something without meat or dairy was less likely to cross a dietary taboo.

"Why are you being kind to me? What do you want?"

"I want information," Nakia said, and she saw Minn-Erva relax marginally, and knew she had picked the right tactic. This was not a woman who would trust reassurances of help without expectation of reward. And anyway, it wasn't a lie. "I want your help. I don't know how everything works out here, but you do. I could use a local ally."

Minn-Erva snorted, but she reached for the spoon that Nakia had provided with the meal. "What's in it for me?" she demanded, shoving a spoonful of rice into her mouth.

Nakia smiled slightly, raised an eyebrow, glanced at the food. Minn-Erva scowled at her, but she ate stolidly and rapidly, shoving in the food as if she didn't know when she would next get another meal. This woman had experienced hunger, Nakia thought.

Minn-Erva's hands were steadier than they had been in the bar. Whatever she had been withdrawing from, she was mostly over it. Nakia made note of that as well. Those were very sure hands, sturdy and capable hands, scarred across the backs with the marks of old battles. Had those hands been working at full efficiency when she and Nakia fought in the city, Nakia was not at all sure she would have walked away.

_Do not let your guard down._

But she found that it was nice to have someone to eat with. When she wasn't on assignment for the War Dogs, she was almost never alone. She had grown up in a sprawling clan full of aunties and uncles and cousins. Mealtimes were a cheerful and raucous affair, full of friendly banter as Nakia and her cousins tried to craft plausibly deniable insults and dirty jokes under Grandmother's watchful eye. She had gotten used to the silence of the ship, but it still felt subtly wrong to her.

"What is your planet like?" she asked abruptly, picking at her plantain. The freeze-dried stuff was strange in texture, nothing like her Auntie Ayodele's fried plantain, crisp and hot and melting on the tongue.

"I have no planet," Minn-Erva said shortly through a mouthful of rice.

"You know what I mean."

Minn-Erva raised her head sharply. Her hair was starting to dry out and recover a little bit of its former wave and curl. "Why do you want to know?" she asked suspiciously.

Nakia couldn't help laughing a little. "It's not a trap. I just want to know. I miss my family and my cousins, that's all. I know you must miss your world, and I wondered what it might be like. Did your family sit together to eat back home, like mine did?"

There was a long silence, while Minn-Erva scraped up every last grain of rice from her tray. Then she said, speaking to the table rather than to Nakia, "I used to eat with my squadmates. We were everything to each other. I scored very highly in my youth group and was placed with other high scorers. We were the very best of the best."

She looked down at her own scarred hand, trembling on the tabletop. Then she scraped after a lingering grain of rice in the edge of the tray. Her head was still down, her hair hiding her face.

Nakia pushed her tray across the table. "Do you want my plantain?"

Minn-Erva barely hesitated before pulling the tray toward herself. "Is that what it's called? I haven't eaten it before."

"I hate that this is your first introduction to it," Nakia said. "This can hardly be called plantain. Back home there are so many different ways to eat it — fried and spicy, or drenched in caramelized sugar with the juice dripping out, or stuffed in a sandwich topped with gravy." She was smiling in spite of herself. "I should take you home and let my aunts feed you."

It slipped out without thinking, but she could have laughed once the words were spoken; why would she ever take an alien fugitive home to her family? Minn-Erva merely curled a lip, as if she too recognized the falseness of the words. They were of different worlds, quite literally.

And yet, she couldn't help thinking about how her aunts spoke of food: as if all it took to get past one's differences with someone was to sit down to a meal with them. It was not that simple, she knew. And yet, there _was_ something about eating together that seemed to ease the barriers between people. And she liked watching Minn-Erva's enthusiasm about the food. The woman was so guarded otherwise, but eating was the one time that she didn't seem to be able to keep her barriers up.

Minn-Erva finished the plantains and, looking a bit wistful, pushed the tray away. Nakia got up to put the trays in the cleaner. "Do you want to try another food from my homeworld?" she said, over her shoulder.

"Please yourself," Minn-Erva said, but there was a trace of eagerness, a slight hint of a smile that bordered on flirtatious. She looked, perhaps, a bit less guarded, or at least curious.

Keeping half an eye on her prisoner-turned-guest, Nakia went to the food stores. She dug under the trays of serviceable everyday freeze-dried meals, and pulled out a small package that her aunts had given her before she left. "A taste of home," Auntie Ife had said, pressing the crinkling package into her hands. She had intended to save it for a special occasion, but there never seemed to be exactly the right opportunity. Perhaps this was it.

She put it in the reheater. The smell of cardamom, coconut, and fried dough curled into the ship's recycled air.

"What is that?" Minn-Erva asked.

"It's mandazi. My favorite treat as a child." She took out the package, now puffed up and hot, with steam escaping. "A sort of ... no, you don't know what doughnuts are, either. Here, see what you think."

It was only with slight regret that she divided the mandazi between the two of them. Watching Minn-Erva bite into a soft yet crispy, sugar-dusted beignet was a pleasure all its own, almost comparable to the explosion of familiar spices and light sweetness on her tongue as she bit into her own.

"Do you like it?"

"I suppose it's not terrible," Minn-Erva said, reaching for another after stuffing the first one into her mouth almost whole. There was sugar on her lips, glittering like frost on plum-colored berries.

***

There was still only one bed on the ship. And Nakia had already had one night of catnapping on the floor. She helped Minn-Erva back to the bed and then crawled in after her, waving a hand to dim the cabin lights.

"What are you doing?" Minn-Erva demanded, shoving all the way over to the wall.

"I'm taking a chance," Nakia said. She touched the necklace, and the suit melted away all over, leaving her in the light, loose dress she preferred to wear around the ship. Her suddenly exposed, bare leg rested against Minn-Erva's, and she felt the alien woman flinch. The bed was not wide.

It had been a long time since Nakia had shared a bed with anyone, too. But she was tired of sleeping alone. Minn-Erva's body was thin and corded with muscle, lying stiffly along hers and then, ever so slightly, beginning to relax. She was very warm, as if her species ran a bit warmer than humans.

"Just a friendly reminder," Nakia said, as she placed a light and cautious hand on Minn-Erva's hip. "This ship can't be used by anyone other than me, and the defenses that are part of my body are also locked to me. So if you expect to try anything in the night ... I wouldn't."

"Any suggestions about what you might want me to try?" Minn-Erva's coyly flirtatious tone seemed slightly forced. Nakia refused to take the bait.

"I'm also a light sleeper. You'll have to climb over me to get to any knives."

Minn-Erva was silent. Then she twisted around, hitching briefly as her movements tugged on the healing gut wound. They were face to face now, pressed together in the narrow bed. Minn-Erva's eyes glittered in the dim light, flickering with the lights of the instrument panel from across the small cabin. There was a challenge in it, and when she opened her mouth, Nakia gave up on pretending, and met the challenge halfway. 

Minn-Erva's lips still had a light dusting of crystal sugar. Nakia swept it off with her tongue.

Minn-Erva gasped out something, a faint curse, it sounded like. Then she rolled over, on top of Nakia, with her long muscular leg pinning Nakia's down and her hips grinding against Nakia's, their mouths locked together.

"Careful—" Nakia tried to gasp out, not sure if she meant to warn Minn-Erva against undoing all the work Nakia had done stitching her back together, or if it was herself she was concerned for; but either way, there was no opportunity to speak, not with Minn-Erva's hungry kisses stealing her breath.

Nakia couldn't quite figure out how she'd lost control of the situation; all she knew was that suddenly she was slick and wet, their legs working together as Minn-Erva pressed into her, one hand pinning Nakia's wrist above her head, fingers curled lightly just below the kimoyo beads. Minn-Erva still tasted faintly of sugar and cardamom and plantain, but there was nothing of home about her; as she kissed and bit, she was _wild,_ she was fierce, she was something from the outer rim of the cold dark wilderness beyond the Earth. And she was in Nakia's bed, and Nakia _wanted_ her here, and she could have lost herself in the buzzing-headed bliss of having Minn-Erva's thigh grinding between hers —

— except for the way Minn-Erva was working a finger underneath the kimoyo beads.

Nakia stretched to slap her other hand around Minn-Erva's wrist. "Don't even think about it," she said into the other woman's mouth.

Indistinctly, Minn-Erva mumbled a curse that the translation didn't quite pick up. Her hand slipped down, sliding up Nakia's arm.

But she didn't stop kissing her. The long line of her body worked rhythmically against Nakia's, her thigh pressed between Nakia's legs. She slid down, transfered the wet stroke of her mouth to Nakia's throat and the soft skin between her breasts. One of Minn-Erva's strong, callused hands found its way onto Nakia's bare thigh, slid up beneath the skirt.

When Minn-Erva's fingers entered her, Nakia's back arched with an electric jolt that coursed down every nerve, shuddering and tightening.

***

She brought Minn-Erva off with her mouth, alien salt on her tongue, and her own hips languid and loose as she lay between Minn-Erva's legs with her own legs and hips rucked up against the too-close wall of the sleeping berth.

***

After, they lay close together, with Minn-Erva tucked against the wall. Nakia thought of locking her up again, but it didn't seem worth the effort.

"And how do you sleep after sex?" Minn-Erva murmured against her ear.

"Still a light sleeper. Sorry." She twisted a bit, touched the kimoyo beads and sent a wordless command to wake her if someone tried to crawl over her in the night.

Minn-Erva huffed out a breath. "I don't understand you," she said quietly, and after a time, even more quietly, "I don't understand any of your people. That was always the problem with ... her."

"Who?"

There was no answer. Minn-Erva's breathing was steady and slow.

Perhaps she would ask again in the morning. Or perhaps they would fight again before dawn, if Minn-Erva tried to take the ship.

Nakia licked her lips, swiping off sugar and salt, and the faint taste of alien blood. You _changed_ out here. She was not going to be the same woman who went back to Wakanda, to be embraced into the loving and chaotic bosom of her extended family. 

"What is your name?" Minn-Erva asked softly, in the dark, and Nakia almost laughed; she hadn't realized that she had never said it.

"Nakia, of the River Tribe." It occurred to her as she said it that she could never have said it on a mission on Earth, where every detail of her past had to be carefully guarded.

Strange, how here in space she could be, in some ways, more herself than she ever dared to be on Earth outside of Wakanda.

There was a slight movement from Minn-Erva, a small nod, and then the alien woman settled down to sleep against the wall, the coiled-up tension relaxing slowly out of her whipcord body in small shivers. 

Nakia laid a hand across her side, fingers spread against Minn-Erva's thigh, and turned her face into the back of Minn-Erva's neck. Minn-Erva's hair tickled Nakia's face, but not enough to need to move. 

It was so warm, having someone else in the bed with her. Humans were not meant to be alone.

She smiled and pressed her face into Minn-Erva's neck, breathing in her scent, and taking a leap of faith, she slept.


End file.
